With a lot of recent speculation in the popular press, and other recent articles on the Institution and other professional bodies websites, you would think the end of the world is coming, AI this, AI that, AI Stole My Job.
A recent article heading.
“CEO slammed for replacing 90% of his company’s support staff with an A.I. chatbot—then bragging about it on Twitter” in Fortune Magazine. Where support staff were replaced by a ChatBot powered by AI highlight the truth of this and I am sure many more similar situations like this will arise.
When you look at many jobs, they are repetitive and even mundane, and a lot of support desks run a similar model. A front-end call centre with non-technical people following a script, a predetermined tree of questions and answers. The decision trees quite often resolve a high number of problems. If you follow the IT Crowd TV programme, the phrase ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again” is synonymous with the IT Support Desk. Back in the 1980’s and 90’s I used to run a support desk, and the above procedure solved 60% of all our issues, followed by “Is your PC plugged in”, that was at least another 10% of all calls.
After this, you move to a more technical phase, with an actual person who has training who will look at the problem in more detail. This is true whether you have onsite support or still using telephone support.
So replacing a person with a ChatBot, even with just a decision tree is really just a natural progression, using an AI, enhances that by hopefully making the ChatBot ask better questions and provide better solutions, well before you need the techie in the back office to take over.
There are lots of jobs that are repetitive and may be done by quite intelligent, learned professionals, for example the humble Will. We all of course should make them and here in the UK, it costs around £200-£300 pounds to get one drawn up by a solicitor, there are many charities who offer a free service for a donation of around the same amount.
For 90% of these wills, they follow a similar, easy to follow format, indeed, you could copy your parents, bother, sisters, next door neighbours will change out the names and addresses etc, and they would be quite acceptable and legal. Ask an AI to create a Will and it will do, from my own experience, I took 4 or 5 goes, as you need to be specific, I asked for a Will, got one, looked OK, then asked for one for the UK, very different, then asked for one for England and Wales (Scottish law is different), what I ended up with was almost identical to an existing will we had.
So for what is really a basic, tedious, money maker for the legal profession, this can be done for free and be equally valid.
I would point out here, that if you have anything outside of the basics, i.e. 3 homes, Ferrari, expensive jewellery, families and children from different marriages, estranged family members etc. you probably should get professional legal advice. You can even take you existing home made Will into a solicitor for them to scan and keep on file for you.
For the legal people out there, why not offer your own AI Will offering through your website, that for a reduced fee uses the AI to ask the questions you would use, and produce the Will, can be scanned by a solicitor, and sent out for signing etc. Just a suggestion.
In my own profession, I was a software developer for many years, and it was always a dream to have reusable code modules, and in some ways that has become true. Now companies like Open AI are recruiting analysts and programmers, so that software development can be modelled, and AI can create programs without out the need for a software developer.
As I look back over my career, I see many systems that I have worked on, Rates, Community Charge, Council Tax, Stock Control, Invoicing, Insurance, Assurance, Child Trust Fund, Membership Systems etc. and I see the same basic models within these disparate systems. Names and Address, Stock Lists (Food Items, Owned Houses, Rented Houses, Types of Insurance), these can all easily be modelled, and an AI is quite capable of providing standard code and database models for these. If only 50, 60, 70% of all software developing could be done by an AI, then the effect on staffing could be enormous. Companies think their products are unique, but the reality is, they are not, they are variations on a theme, and this can be modelled.
Another reason companies are likely to use an AI is; Whether you are a a member of a support desk team, a lawyer or a software developer, you generally will work 8 hours and go home, the office shuts down. An “AI DOES NOT SLEEP!” The nett affect is the company does not just save money using AI but its services are available to the public for longer.
At a recent webinar one of my colleague’s comments that the AI becomes the cleverest entity in the room. I won’t disagree with him, during my career I was a leading light, and moved companies and organisations forward. Then comes the day when someone new comes in your environment and you realise you are no longer the cleverest person in the room. Many people feel threatened but this, but if you understand that it will happen, you can just get over it. The same occurs with AI. Currently AI may actually not be much cleverer than you, it just knows more at that point of time, you would need to look it all up, collate it and come up with a similar or the same answer. It has done it quicker.
If you look at many jobs, they can be proceduralised, these could be at threat, including for example in education, where you have time consuming tasks like children needing some specialised teaching programmes. I suspect, that the child’s details can be matched with the needs and availability of skills on site to create an individual teaching plan. No removal of jobs here, just making that job easier and more focused.
The interesting thing that has come out of my time using AI, is that AI is like a software developer asking the user what they want. You really have to ask the right question. I see a whole new career here for people who will have to understand not just how an AI works but also have potentially and exacting knowledge of the language they use to interact with the AI.
John Ellis FIAP Cmpn
Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article are solely that of the Author and do not reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of The Institution of Analysts and Programmers
